Andrew T.J. Kaethler

In the Republic Plato views the city as the human soul writ large, and by exploring the visible nature of the city he seeks to unravel the invisible mystery of the soul. Likewise, but in the inverse, this paper begins from a theological notion of personhood in order to provide a broad framework or an imaginative construct to conceive of Church unity. This framework will be formed in light of a relational notion of personhood inspired by Joseph Ratzinger. It will be argued that an ecclesial dimension is necessary for the fulfilment of what it means to be a human person, a being in relation; the Church manifests persons. As human persons exist in the midst of history it means that an important aspect of personhood also concerns how one interacts within the present. To interact, to participate, rightly requires right perception. Following Romano Guardini’s conception of personhood formed in tension, it will be contended that right perception, a proper harmony in this life, requires tension, a tension that only the Church can provide. Analogously, this paper suggests that the Church, East and West, will most flourish in a united tension, a coming together of difference rather than a complete dissolving of our respective distinctions.

I. The Church is a house of living stones

‘I am their great union, I am their eternal oneness.
I am the way of all their ways, on me the millennia are drawn to God’.¹

Relational ontology is arguably a trinitarian truth that resides at the heart of all Christian theology.² Joseph Ratzinger writes, ‘the idea of the Catholic, the all-embracing, the inner unity of I and Thou and We does not constitute one chapter of theology among others. It is the key that opens the door to the proper understanding of the whole’.³ In this trinitarian mystery we are given a glimpse of personhood in its perfection.⁴ The Father is person, the Son is person, the Holy Spirit is person. And